Chasing Adventure (and Finding Wine)

I grew up in a wine-drinking household, but I didn’t really drink wine myself until my twenties. I was very principled about waiting until I was legal to do so, which meant I arrived in adulthood as a complete novice to wine.

And then I moved to Prague in 1990.

It was the first wave of ESL teachers after the Velvet Revolution. The Iron Curtain had just fallen. The world felt like it was rearranging itself in real time, and I wanted to live inside that change.

It was exhilarating. And terrifying.

I was young, far from home, and trying to find my footing in a country rewriting its future. Thankfully, I had a small band of American teachers to explore with — people who made the newness feel less overwhelming.

One day, a Czech colleague told me about an American teacher who had been assigned to a school in Bratislava. Alone. A Slovak teacher friend of hers mentioned he seemed homesick. Would I consider visiting him?

So, my friend Leila, fellow ESL teacher, and I boarded a bus for a three-hour winter ride to the capital of Slovakia. It felt a bit like the local teachers had arranged a playdate for a grown man!

He was from Texas, with a deep drawl that made me quietly pity his students as they tried to learn English. But that’s beside the point.

The magic happened later.

There we were — in a dormitory room in a frozen Eastern European city I hadn’t had an ounce of knowledge about a year earlier — and he brought out two bottles of local red wine.

I don’t remember whether the wine was technically good. I don’t remember the varietals. I couldn’t tell you the producer.

But I remember the feeling.

We laughed. We told stories. English rolled out of us in waves of familiarity and relief. Outside, the post-Soviet world was reshaping itself. Inside, we were young and brave and utterly alive. In my memory, Václav Havel and Milan Kundera might as well have been in the room.

That was my wine “aha” moment.

It wasn’t about tannins or oak or acidity. It wasn’t snooty or intimidating. It wasn’t even really about alcohol.

It was about history.

It was about friendship.

It was about adventure.

It was even about terroir — though I didn’t know that word yet.

Wine wasn’t the point. It was the thread that tied the experience together.

Looking like I need a glass of wine... on a return visit to Prague in 1997

I can tell so many stories like that. Wine has a way of showing up at the edges of meaningful moments, making them warmer, deeper, more shared. It’s why I love that wine can be approachable, joyful, and part of real life.

And it still amazes me that thirty-plus years later, that girl sitting in a Bratislava dorm room is now pouring her own wine… in a tractor shed... in a remote corner of Arizona.

Life is funny that way.

At Skyhaven, we hope you find your own “aha” moments. Maybe it’s the first sip of our Mourvedre that surprises you. Maybe it’s discovering you actually like red wine thanks to our Pandemonium blend. Maybe it’s simply sitting with someone you care about, glass in hand, telling stories you’ll remember years from now.

Come visit us. Tell us your wine discovery story. Let us be part of your next adventure. Because the best wines aren’t just tasted; they’re lived.